{"id":729891,"date":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/729891\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:03:12","slug":"preview-mystics-play-fire-on-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/729891\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview: Mystics play Fire on Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Washington Mystics play the Portland Fire tomorrow afternoon. Let\u2019s preview this game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">When: Sunday, June 28, 2026 at 3 p.m. ET<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Where: CareFirst Arena, Washington<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">How to Watch: Monumental Sports Network<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">I gotta say that last night\u2019s game against the Connecticut Sun sucked. Young teams have setbacks. But they can\u2019t have setbacks against a team that is in limbo.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The good news is that Washington will head back home for a four game stretch starting tomorrow against the Portland Fire. And yes, the title is correct. The Mystics haven\u2019t played the Fire in 24 years. Why?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">It\u2019s because the Fire was an expansion franchise in 2000 and played until 2002. After the 2002 season, their franchise and some others folded because the WNBA intended to transfer ownership of teams to NBA team owners but not all of the NBA owners wanted the teams. Also, the WNBA was subsidizing team operations until 2002 and many NBA team owners didn\u2019t want to do it after that. Paul Allen, the Portland Trail Blazers owner during that time didn\u2019t want the Fire, no one else wanted to buy the team, and then the team folded.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Fast forward 24 years and the women\u2019s sports landscape has changes. Women\u2019s soccer with the Portland Thorns has been very popular with the locals. And now, Portland is the first city to get a WNBA team back after losing it 24 years ago. The owners of the team are Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal, who also co-own the Sacramento Kings and the own the Thorns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnba.com\/game\/por-vs-was-1020200212\/box-score#box-score\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mystics last played the Fire on Aug. 2, 2002<\/a> and lost 67-65 despite Chamique Holdsclaw scoring 26 points for Washington. This time, the Mystics want to get back on track after losing to the Sun. The current version of the Fire lost three of their last four games including their last two games to the Chicago Sky.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Carla Leite and Bridget Carleton are Portland\u2019s top scorers this season so far. Hopefully, Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen and Shakira Austin make life hard for them tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Mystics play the Portland Fire tomorrow afternoon. Let\u2019s preview this game. When: Sunday, June 28, 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,8253,70050,434],"class_list":["post-729891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-washington-mystics","tag-washington-mystics-game-preview","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}